In case readers didn’t have a chance to click through the link in my post, yesterday, related to voter fraud, I’d like to highlight another key point from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) report that was the foundation for J. Christian Adams’s essay.

It’s important to break the data down so you understand what we’re talking about, here.  PILF found that, in Virginia, more than 5,500 people who had been registered to vote were removed for citizenship reasons.  Of those 5,500, 1,852 had actually voted, casting an average of four ballots each.  Many of them, according to Adams, had been registered to vote even though they checked the box saying they were non-citizens.

I emphasize this point because the House chamber of the Rhode Island General Assembly has approved legislation that would greatly expand automatic registration of people to vote:

Legislation to automatically put anyone who applies for a Rhode Island driver’s license on the state’s voter rolls, unless they opt out, cleared the state House of Representatives on Wednesday, despite GOP efforts to block the same practice at other state agencies with troubled computer histories. …

But along the way, House Minority Leader Patricia Morgan, R-West Warwick, sought to strip the bill of language allowing any state agencies — other than the Division of Motor Vehicles — to automatically place applicants for unemployment, public assistance and other state benefits on the voter rolls. Her move failed on a 62-to-10 party-line vote.

Welcome to the world of “one-stop shopping.”  When the Rhode Island insiders are done, anybody who checks in with the state government for any reason will be automatically signed up for any welfare benefits for which they might be eligible and registered to vote.  “Here’s your free stuff and a voter registration card so you can be sure to keep electing the people giving it to you.”

And in all this, we’re supposed to believe that a state government that can’t launch a computer system or accurately determine who should get Medicaid or SNAP benefits, while resisting efforts to use basic means of control, like eVerify for immigration, will keep the voter rolls clean?